I was very honored to speak at the Paley Center’s International Council Summit, an annual event that brings together a who’s who of media heavyweights and impresarios. This year the topic was big data and so the conference opened appropriately enough with Hans Rosling, the infographic genius, who shamed us for our ignorance about the state of the world (you have to see the video.) Eric Schmidt (yes, that Eric Schmidt) closed the proceedings with more quotable stuff than I could tweet (e.g., “The Internet is a huge accomplishment – don’t screw with it!!”) Of course everyone wanted to hear what Nate Silver had to say about his new gig at ESPN, and now you, too, can see every speaker on the program here . . . except me. I gave the luncheon talk at the 21 Club (talk about ambiance!) and so there was no recording.

Here’s what I said:

The Centers for Disease Control found out that over half of Americans believe that the health storylines they see in entertainment programming are accurate and a quarter say that those TV shows are one of their main sources for health information.

Of course we understand the difference between fiction and reality, but we have to be awfully naive to believe that really compelling stories don’t have an effect on us.

For 13 years, we’ve been doing careful academic research at the Norman Lear Center in order to figure out exactly how much of an impact media has on us. We’ve found that a storyline on the TV show Numbers – you know, the one with Rob Morrow – convinced 10% of its viewers to volunteer to donate their organs. An HIV hotline got a record number of callers after a soapie, the Bold & the Beautiful, aired a scene in which a guy tells his girlfriend he’s HIV positive.

Whether it’s smoking or seatbelts, or Fonzie getting a library card, we know that attitudes and behaviors can shift in response to imagery on popular television.

When we asked Americans whether they had ever taken some kind of action based on entertainment programming they’d seen, 65% of respondents admitted that they had. And those actions ranged from seeking more information about the issue to making a donation to a charity (13% owned up to that).

Is it a matter of monkey see, monkey do? Nah. Humans are more complicated than that, and so are the stories we tell each other.

The people in this room know how much is at stake. Imagine if we actually knew what role media was playing in our lives? What would happen if we could accurately measure how media moves us? And what exactly it moves us to do?

Just think back to a song, a TV show, a comic book character, a movie or a book that really shifted your perspective, that set you on a new path, that made you think about yourself and the world in different way.

We’ve certainly seen stories literally save lives. A radio soap opera in Tanzania was so effective at lowering HIV rates in provinces that received the broadcast compared to those that did not, that they had to discontinue the experiment and broadcast the show to the entire country for ethical reasons.

Usually we don’t have the luxury of creating such a large and diverse control group in order to scientifically measure the impact of media. You see similar issues in the field of education, where it’s taken entirely too long, in my mind, for educational initiatives to be adequately vetted through the use of control groups.

What if we applied the scientific rigor of the pharmaceutical industry to TV programming? What if we treated media as if it were a drug: which delivery systems would prove most potent and for whom? What types of content would prove life-changing?

At the Norman Lear Center, we recently developed a pragmatic new survey methodology for measuring the impact of media. The key is addressing the self-selection bias problem. Only certain people seek out certain kinds of media based on their personal taste and access. Our new tool accounts for that bias by calculating each and every survey respondent’s propensity to have seen that piece of media. After that likelihood has been determined, we compare very similar people who were exposed to that media and those who were not. Then we determine whether exposure to that piece of media is correlated with shifts in knowledge, attitudes or behavior.

When we used this methodology on the documentary film Food, Inc., we found significant differences between our control group and those who had watched the film, who were eating healthier food, were more knowledgeable about food safety issues, and who were shopping at farmers markets more frequently than very similar people who had not seen the film. (Here’s my TEDx talk about this research.)

These days we’re more awash than ever in data about how we humans are using and consuming media. For the Food, Inc. study, it was cheap and easy for us to gather 20,000 respondents through digital platforms.

But, as you also know, virtually no one agrees on how to measure media usage, engagement, and most importantly, impact. And the stakes seem higher than ever as we witness the development of ever more intimate and immersive technologies which make that bleed line between screen time (mediated reality) and real time thinner and thinner.

Why hasn’t measuring the impact of media been a priority for us? Well one powerful reason is liability. Who wants to be on the hook for having had some kind of negative impact on people? We’ve seen these accusations play out before with kids and violent video games or heavy metal music. Unless the news is good news, the media industry doesn’t necessarily want to know.

Another problem is that there are far too many incentives built into the media business to use measurement to game the system. The media industries are, by and large, for-profit industries. If you can come up with a custom audience measurement metric that makes your company more money, then you will receive strong encouragement to continue to use that metric – even if it doesn’t do a good job of actually monitoring who encountered your media and what kind of impact it had on them. The truth has been beside the point.

There are powerful incentives to keep your methods opaque – to come up with a black box algorithm that makes it impossible for others to check your work by attempting to repeat your results. This is why many media companies subscribe to multiple social media monitoring services, all of whom use different methods and generate different results that can be cherry picked by their clients.

So we remain adrift in a sea of unverifiable data points, making it virtually impossible for scholars and researchers to find out the truth about who engages in what media and to what end. As you can imagine, foundations that fund media initiatives have been very frustrated with their inability to get accurate, empirically solid, repeatable measurements of the impact of the media they have produced. Many have concluded that it’s simply too difficult and too expensive to do; that we’ll never have numbers we can compare, and, after all, isn’t it impossible to measure shifts in hearts in minds?

This year, we entered into a partnership with the Gates and the Knight Foundations to create a global hub for media impact research at the Lear Center. Our goal is to assist all media makers to do a better job accounting for how people engage with their media and assessing the consequences of that engagement.

We’re expanding the amount and types of research that we do at USC, and we are committed to collecting and sharing best practices from all around the world, from all sectors, academic, governmental, industry. From luminaries like you.

This new initiative is called the Media Impact Project and it brings together scholars across the disciplinary spectrum to develop and share freely the best possible tools and practices. Echoing Nate Silver’s comment this morning, I hope you’ll join us in making media analytics a non-fiction business.

I recently gave my fifth talk for the TED network – this time on one of my favorite projects at the Norman Lear Center, where I’m the director of research. The Lear Center has conducted many studies demonstrating that entertainment plays a key role in people’s lives, igniting curiosity, inciting conversations, and importantly, influencing attitudes and behavior. One of my favorites was a series of U.S. national surveys that explored whether there is a correlation between entertainment preferences, what we enjoy, and political ideology, what we believe.

One thing you learn in survey research is that it’s not very helpful to ask people to label themselves politically. So we created an instrument that would diagnose the respondent’s ideology based on their responses to dozens of statements about hot-button political issues. Using statistical clustering analysis, we discovered that three groups emerged from our national sample. “Conservatives,” as we decided to call them, “liberals” and “moderates.” These same respondents were asked about their preferred leisure-time activities and their favorite radio and TV shows, Web sites, movies, games and sports and much more.

What we found is that each of these clusters had distinctly different entertainment and leisure preferences. (For a full run-down, check out our white paper.)

Now this kind of research doesn’t allow us to determine causation: I can’t tell you whether your politics determine taste or taste determines politics. But, if I had the chance to ask you enough questions, I would be able to predict your politics based on your taste. And vice versa.

I’ve always wanted to scale up this research to a global sample, where we could see what kinds of clusters emerge on a trans-national scale. Because as you know, in a networked world, culture, media, and politics are not constrained by national boundaries. So, last Fall, I leapt at the opportunity to administer a similar survey in Tunisia, the cradle of the Arab Spring.

Working with Mobile Accord, the company that created the SMS platform for the Haiti relief effort, we administered our survey to over 2,300 Tunisians on their mobile phones. We knew that our sample would skew younger and more Internet-savvy than the general population, which would provide us with a valuable glimpse into the mindset and media habits of a population that will most likely play a leading role in shaping the future of Tunisia, and perhaps the Middle East.

Because it was a mobile phone poll, we had to make the survey much shorter. So, in order to diagnose a respondent’s ideology we decided to focus on cultural politics. We asked questions about how their religious beliefs inform their entertainment choices, and the role that they believe government should play in that negotiation.

We also included specific questions about the controversial TV airing of Persepolis, an animated film which included an image of God, and the violent protests surrounding the anti-Islamic film, Innocence of the Muslims.

We identified three groups that fell on a spectrum from conservative to moderate to liberal. The group that most fascinated us was the largest group: conservatives. Among these young wired culturally conservative Tunisians, we found entertainment and media preferences that we would expect from liberals in the U.S.

“Surfing the Internet” was their favorite way of entertaining themselves (conservatives in the U.S. had chosen “reading” as their favorite.)

They were more into video games than reading.

When they do read books, they prefer romance novels and sci fi to religious texts.

We were amazed to discover that they were the most passionate consumers of American entertainment,

They demonstrated a strong preference for Hollywood films and they had less interest in local Tunisian fare than Moderates or Liberals.

They were also the most likely to say that U.S. entertainment has had a positive influence on the world.

So much for stereotypes about religious conservatism and anti-Americanism in the Middle East. The picture is far more complicated than you might think. The key is asking the right combination of questions on the right platform.

We know that politics are important but we tend to be dismissive about taste and the pleasures we take from TV so bad that it’s actually good. All too often we assume that entertainment is too trivial for serious critical inquiry. But I believe that entertainment preferences often go unrecognized as powerful indicators of personal and social aspirations. And, since the Cold War, we have found over and over again that popular culture can bridge deep national and political divides in the most surprising ways. In fact, many have argued that Hollywood films and TV shows have more impact on global public opinion than our foreign policy.

We can get so caught up in looking at people through the lens of demographics and ideology that it often obscures our view of what people really care about, what gives them pleasure. And when you know that, I believe you know the most important thing you can know about anyone.

Yesterday, I was very excited to launch the Media Impact Project, which aspires to be a global hub for the best research on measuring the impact of media. Supported by $3.25 million in initial funding from the Gates and Knight Foundations, I’m optimistic that the Norman Lear Center can help make media more accountable to audiences and contribute to a better understanding of the role that media plays in people’s lives.

The New York Times picked up the story and I was thrilled to see reporter Michael Cieply focus on this aspect of the program:

The Lear Center collaborated with viral video wunderkind Joe Sabia on a hard-hitting video about how the War on Terror is depicted on primetime TV. Watching the coverage of the Boston Marathon bomber manhunt, both Joe and I were instantly reminded of our work on this project. Here’s how Joe put it:

From bombings, to week long investigations, to racial profiling, to drawing assumptions, to wanted posters, to gun fights, getaways, to shutting down transportation, to Miranda rights not being read…

Ironically, these pencils were a big hit at the Tribeca Film Institute's super-high-tech Interactive fest.

Film festivals are tricky events to navigate. Of course they’re about art and commerce and, for some reason, all too many filmmakers are uncomfortable with that combination. Despite the entertainment industry’s craven reputation, there are plenty of people in it – not just indie movie types – who long for something pure: complex aesthetic objects that will transport people to new places and new ways of understanding this world and the many alternate realities we’ve crafted for ourselves. That idealism, and the understandable longing for money and attention to achieve that dream, is prominently on display at fests like Tribeca. And yes, a lot of it is about glad-handing and hitting as many cocktail parties as possible (as well as standing next to the right person at the red carpet premieres), but more and more these days, it’s also about figuring out how to make movies do that the networking for you. Filmmakers who’ve managed to crack the social media code have, indeed, mastered the twenty-first century art of networking.

I thought it was terrific that Tribeca devoted an entire day of the Fest to a conference on interactive media. The event was held in Frank Gehry’s gleaming IAC building, in front of an impossibly long wall of screens. The shallow wide room was packed from start to finish with a mix of digerati (I was thrilled to meet Christina Warren the entertainment editor for Mashable) and people who’ve been toiling in the traditional media trenches all their lives. The implicit goal was to figure out how to make sure that filmmakers learn how to adapt to an increasingly interactive media space – something more easily said than done. These days, film projects of all sizes are expected to have some sort of online presence, not only for the purpose of promotion but for something far more ephemeral: audience engagement. There are generally no accepted standards to measure the latter, but it usually means that you’ve managed to convince passive potential audience members to take an active role in promoting, extending, or even reimagining the film itself or its subject.

For all too many filmmakers, a transmedia campaign includes a basic formula: a Web site, a Twitter feed, a Facebook page and the coup de grace, an iPhone app. Much to the consternation of app developers like Michelle Byrd from Games for Change, creatives working in traditional media industries often assume that audience engagement just happens on these platforms: as long as you build it, someone will come. But take a quick look at all the apps you’ve installed and don’t use on your phone, and you’ll recognize that even scoring an install doesn’t necessarily lead to one iota of “engagement.”

Learning how to port linear, narrative art forms over to interactive platforms is a tremendous creative and technical challenge. Read the rest of this entry »

Check out Joe Sabia’s video summary of our report on how primetime TV dramas depict the War on Drugs

Ever wonder what it would be like to parachute down to earth, turn on a TV, and learn about the aliens who live here? Well if someone did such a thing, and they tuned into the most popular primetime shows in America (many of which are viewed by billions of people around the world) they would see a lot of story lines about the War on Drugs. And they would probably come to the conclusion that it’s not working.

In other words, they would probably agree with the majority of Americans: in a rare sign of unity across party lines, 63% of Democrats, 64% of Republicans and 70% of Independents describe the War on Drugs as a failure.

This issue came to international attention last weekend at the Summit of Americas, where both current and former presidents across Latin America demanded changes in America’s conduct of the 40-year-old war that has caused decades of chaos across the continent.

On the eve of 4/20 – long associated with cannibis culture and the growing movement to legalize marjuana – the Norman Lear Center released Joe Sabia’s video summary of our research on how the War on Drugs is depicted in primetime. Major findings included:

• In TV storylines about the War on Drugs, drug users are not arrested and drug suspects are often portrayed as morally ambiguous or even heroic.
• In these TV shows, 65% of drug suspects are white, accurately reflecting that the vast majority of drug users (and likely offenders) in the U.S. are white.
• Despite the predominance of African-Americans and other minorities in U.S. prisons for drug violations, most drug manufacturers and dealers in the series studied were white.
• Prescription drug abuse and methamphetamines were depicted three times more often than recreational marijuana.

Narrating Behavior Change

It was exhilarating to participate in a five-day workshop in Mexico City hosted by the World Bank. Researchers, media makers and development experts from 15 countries shared knowledge about entertainment education techniques and worked together to develop new behavior change campaigns across Africa and South America. Find out more.

Fashion & Politics

Does fashion play a role in politics? You betcha! But all the fashion rules are turned on their head in a world where having a signature style can make you a target for derision. I had a lot of fun talking to Esquire about who's deviated from the uniform (e.g., Bernie) and why.
Find out more.

ONA LONDON

I'll be crossing the pond to attend the Online News Association's conference in London, March 6, 2015. The focus is on mobile and so I'll be presenting the Media Impact Project's latest how-to guide on Mobile Metrics. Find out more about
the session
.

Social Media in India

A big highlight of my year was a trip to India to speak at
APOGEE, a technical extravaganza including over 6000 students, 100 colleges, and 80 technical events at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) in Pilani. I was joined by a star-studded crew, including Mansoor Khan, a titan of the Indian Film Industry, and Dr. Walter Lewin, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the MIT. Check out the
video of my talk on the social impact of social media in India, where digital social networking is booming (especially among women). Find out more about the event
here.

Mission Creek Festival

I'm very excited to keynote the Innovation Conference at the Mission Creek Festival, a wonderful music, film, lit and food fest that takes over the entirety of Iowa City. I'll be talking about Technologies of Taste and the impact of recommendation systems. Headliners include great indie bands like Real Estate, Foxygen and the clever Father John Misty, along with literary superstars like Lorrie Moore and that quirky Ander Monson. Join us March 31 - April 5!
Find out more.

Pop Culture & Science

Last Fall, I attended a timely workshop at MIT on
The Evolving Culture of Science Engagement. Sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Culture Kettle, we explored how popular culture helps frame, inform and distort our understanding of science. Read the report.

Real Food Media Contest

I had so much fun juding the Real Food Media Contest last year that I'm doing it again. And I'm thrilled to see that Tom Colicchio, Padma Lakshmi, Jamie Oliver, Michael Pollen, Eric Schlosser, and Alice Waters have signed on as well. We’ll be looking for short films that tell great stories about sustainable food and farming:
Check out the finalists and vote for your favorite..

On The Media

I met Bob Garfield, host of NPR's popular program "On The Media," at a terrific conference hosted by TTI/Vanguard, where both of us gave talks on some big problems in the media industry. Afterward, Bob interviewed me about Netflix's data-driven decision to produce the edgy "Orange is the New Black," and included it in an episode called "Dare to Stream.".

LEAP Symposium @ Art Center

I'm a huge fan of Art Center's Designmatters program and so there was no way I was going to miss their LEAP Symposium, which brought together over 100 national thought-leaders working at the intersection of design and social innovation. With IDEO's Jocelyn Wyatt and frog's Robert Fabricant in the room, it was bound to be great. A report has been published in Design Principles and Practices: just let me know if you want a copy ;-)

Imaging War: The Primetime War on Terror

This year Drexel University will devote its Great Works Symposium to the matter of media -- specifically, how we generate images of war. I'm excited to be giving a lecture on November 5 about my research on how the War on Terror is depicted in the most popular dramas on television. Check out the video and the full report. The findings might surprise you.

Championing Women & Diversity in the Media Business

I was thrilled to join Gail Berman, the first and only female executive to hold the top posts at both a major film studio and television network, and Jacqueline Hernandez, COO of Telemundo, to talk about the importance of diversity in media organizations. This event was co-sponsored by Ms. Magazine and USC Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. Watch the video.
Find out more.

Women Empowered at Cognizant

I'm flattered to have been invited back again to be the featured speaker at another Women Empowered event sponsored by Cognizant, a global IT services company that is taking gender diversity in the workplace very seriously. I'll be talking about social media and the need to recruit women in technology industries at the Computer History Museum March 4. Joining me in the conversation will be UT Austin's Tricia Berry, Fizziology COO Jen Handley and Cognizant's Ben Pring.
Find out more and register here.

TED Radio Hour

Guy Raz interviewed me about the culture of copying in the fashion industry in what he called “maybe our best show ever.” The show included one of my all-time faves, Steven Johnson, and Mark Ronson, who produced such inspired work with Amy Winehouse (may she rest in peace).
Check it out!.

My TED Talks

TEDxUSC: Lessons From Fashion’s Free Culture

I was extremely proud when TED.com picked up this talk that I delivered at TEDxUSC, the site of the first TEDx in the world. My talk focuses on the fascinating culture of creativity in the fashion industry, where copying is actually legal.

TEDWomen: Social Media & the End of Gender

I was very proud to share the stage with Madeleine Albright, Eve Ensler, Donna Karan, Sheryl Sandberg and a slew of other impressive speakers at the inaugural TEDWomen. My topic here? Social Media & the End of Gender.

TEDxOC: The Politics of Personal Taste

My fifth talk for the TED network is based on one of my favorite research projects at the Norman Lear Center. It was a special pleasure to speak at the stunning Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa, California.
Watch the video
.

TEDxPHX: Can Movies Really Change People?

Here's my most recent talk which is about how movies can have a measurable impact on people's knowledge and beliefs.

Follow me on Twitter

Fashion & The Creative Commons of Color

Anyone who knows me will realize immediately that I would not be able to resist an event called "Color Lust." I am thrilled to be the keynote speaker at the 50th anniversary summit of the Color Marketing Group, which, probably unbeknownst to you, plays a role in determining the color of your furniture, your car upholstery, your nail polish . . . you name it. I'll be speaking about fashion and the ownership of color on October 28 in luscious art deco Miami!
Find out more.

TED Ads Worth Spreading

I was very proud to be a part of TED's Ads Worth Spreading challenge - an effort to acknowledge the power of advertising and to encourage those who wield that power to do something good with it. I was teamed up with
Kenzo Digital, a new media wunderkind (and an all around nice guy) to identify ad campaigns that touch a cultural nerve; ads that capture or catalyze a cultural movement, moment or event. You can check out the winners here!

Gastronomy & Technology in Barcelona

It's a techie foodie delight! I'll be delivering the keynote presentation during Gastronomy & Technology Days in Barcelona, October 18. Sponsored by the most famous chef in the world, Ferran Adria, and Telefonica, the biggest telecom company in Spain, this event will bring together people exploring the intersection between new technology and food.

Making Media Now

The Filmmakers Collaborative has asked me to speak about media-fueled impact at the Making Media Now conference at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design on June 8. My panel will discuss how cross-platform media and partnerships with NGOs, government and corporations can create measurable impact."
Find out more.